Not online: the recording is held by the project and is not on Media Collections Online, YouTube or archive.org. Everything below is a paraphrase of a machine transcript, the weaker of this site's two transcript layers — see how it was made.
Interview in Warsaw on 27 May 2017 with Yaron Karol Becker, born in 1941 in a Siberian labour-camp town, who later lived in Poland and now lives in Israel. Kerler first asks his consent to record and explains the project. Becker then tells of his birth, his family's return to Poland, his schooling and his Jewish and Polish upbringing, with remarks on Chelm and on his names. The session closes with songs from his parents' repertoire and talk of his plans to return to Israel. Becker says Yiddish is hard for him, and Polish or Russian appear in a few asides.
Opening of the session: a short exchange in Polish, then Kerler introduces Becker and mentions the centenary of the Russian revolution. He explains the AHEYM archive and its aims, asks Becker's consent to record, and wishes him long life. He then asks for his birth year, which Becker gives as 1941.
Becker says he was born in Siberia in the place Yakutsk-stroy (?), a gulag town his mother helped build, and that he was the first Soviet citizen there. His family then went to a gold-mining town, mentioned in Russian as Aldan, survived until 1945, and travelled via Povolzhye (?) to Poland and Lodz. They ended up in Lower Silesia, where he attended a Jewish school for two or three years.
Becker and Kerler talk about the Chelm tales: Becker recalls a story in which the wise men of Chelm hang a tailor in place of a shoemaker. Kerler remarks on how Chelm was a centre of Torah and Kabbalah and mentions the poet Yankev-Tsvi Sharkel. Becker says his Yiddish is poor and that he had learned German.
Becker gives his places of residence in Poland (a Silesian town, Otwock for a year, seven years in Warsaw) and says he attended Jewish schools in Pieszyce (?) and Otwock. He names his parents, Leyb (Leybish) and Dvoyrele (Reyzl), and Kerler speaks of his own children's Yiddish names.
Becker recalls schooling in Otwock and Pieszyce: a mixed-age class, and a school for rescued children. He says his mother asked how school was, and he answered like an old man. He mentions a film called Our Children and his friend Józek Lewartowski, son of a Warsaw ghetto leader (?).
Kerler asks about Becker's names Karol and Yaron. Becker explains that his mother's friends wanted to call him Yosi, and that Karol was chosen after Karl Marx (and was ideologically acceptable). Kerler responds with a story about a 1947 Yiddish biography of Stalin and the spelling of Yosef.
Becker describes being raised as a Polish intellectual in a Jewish home, with parents who spoke good Polish and sang in Yiddish. He mentions a song from his father about a rebbe (Shneur?) and a graveyard. He talks of feeling no shame at being Jewish and of his father, a worker. He prefers Polish to Russian for further telling.
Becker and a second voice recall songs from his mother's repertoire, including cradle songs she sang in Siberia. Kerler says one lullaby appears in Goldfaden's first play and sings or recites it.
Kerler asks when Becker is in Israel. Becker says he will be there in a week, and in Russian says he lives in a kibbutz, Hazorea.